Book Review: The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter

 

I’ve read many books about mathematical subjects in search for new ideas and new ways to explain concepts to my students. Writing an easy-to-read book about math is not easy and writing an easy-to-read book about statistics is much more difficult, but David Spiegelhalter of the University of Cambridge succeeded in this task. While most mathematical topics deal with proofs that provide absolute facts, statistics is more difficult because it deals with uncertainty and error.

Spiegelhalter’s walks the reader through different types of data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, correlation, hypothesis testing and the use of Bayesian statistics without getting bogged down with equations. Instead, he focuses on using real-life case studies and just enough graphics to help the reader understand the concepts.

I particularly liked his suggestion in teaching probability and statistics, to postpone the challenging section of probability to later in the course rather than at the beginning. I also liked his liking of using the Bayesian way of estimating probabilities (see prior post: Math Vacation: Thomas Bayes - an Attempt to Prove the Existence of God (jamesmacmath.blogspot.com)).

Book website: The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter | Basic Books

Meet David Spiegelhalter on YouTube: (1352) The Art of Statistics with Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter - YouTube

 

Book Review: Twenty Worlds by Niall Deacon

 

(Cover image credit: Simon McFadden/Reaktion Books)

In Twenty Worlds, The Extraordinary Story of Planets Around Other Stars, Niall Deacon writes about twenty different exoplanets. As discussed in a prior post (Math Vacation: Number of Planets in the Universe (jamesmacmath.blogspot.com)) in this blog, it has been a bit more than thirty years since the first exoplanet was discovered and in that short period of time, thousands have been catalogued.

In the twenty that Deacon describes, he gives us a nice mixture of large, gas giant Jupiter-like planets and smaller, Earth-like planets. His explanations of the various methods of detecting exoplanets are clear and supplemented with well-done illustrations.

Thirty years ago, only the largest of exoplanets could be detected, but now with space-based telescopes and improved technologies for earth-based telescopes, all sizes of exoplanets are becoming detectable and, in some cases, directly observable.

Website: Twenty Worlds by Niall Deacon

Related posts: Math Vacation: How Many Black Holes are there in the Universe? (jamesmacmath.blogspot.com)

Math Vacation: Number of Planets in the Universe (jamesmacmath.blogspot.com)